Model	What it means	Print newsroom	Print advertising	On-line staff	Circumstances
Physically and logically separate	On-line news, advertising staffs in remote offices, sometimes even separate building from print counterparts. May be set up as distinct business unit so parent company can measure profit/loss independent of print newspaper. Little or no integration of staff or management.	Pluses: Managers can limit focus to print products when planning capital resources, head count. Minuses: Little or no control over use, sorting or display of on-line news content. Conflicts, possible resentments over resources devoted to on-line instead of print initiatives.	Pluses: Easy to distinguish between profit/loss for print and on-line. Little or no retraining of print ad sales or operations staff is required. Minuses: Difficult to develop unified sales front for given ad customer. Can create undesirable competitive pressures between print, on-line ad staffs.	Pluses: "Out of sight, out of mind." Separate management unit may have more freedom to choose and display content as it sees fit. On-line staffs, typically a fraction of their print counterparts, have correspondingly smaller bureaucracy. Can move faster, at least in theory. Minuses: Additional cost of separate business unit. Isolation from substantial print resources. Senior executives may be out of loop of on-line strategic planning. Often, poor systems integration.	Multi-property newspaper corporations sometimes put this model into play to achieve economies of scale in staffing, technology. In a single news organization, separation may be the result of office-space limitations or difficulty finding "the right fit" within one print department or another. In a few cases, separation model was chosen to keep on-line staffs out of collective bargaining units.
Physically proximate but logically separate	On-line staffs either located in existing news/advertising offices or close by. Little or no integration of production staffs. Some management integration possible, especially as related to publishing systems.	Pluses: Capital and staff planning still separate, but it's easier to plan, communicate with on-line staffs. Minuses: Though staffs are close, continued separation of content acquisition and editing means much of the work done in print newsroom isn't ideal for on-line readers.	Pluses: Better communication than physically separate model. Can treat on-line sales as a specialty team, similar to existing print sales teams. "Four-legged sales," combining print/on-line sales reps, much easier when staffs are close. Minuses: When on-line, print teams are close, difference between profit margins (and resulting commissions) becomes more apparent. Can make on-line sales an unattractive job.	Pluses: Easier to place on-line staff in "liaison" roles, to monitor activities and develop synergies in nearby news and ad departments. Capital costs may be lower when part of larger corporate office space, computer network. Minuses: "Out of sight, out of mind" no longer applies; some loss of control over on-line decisionmaking.	Physical proximity raises the profile of on-line throughout the organization. It also permits easier publishing systems integrations. Existing unions may have a stronger case for absorbing on-line staffs into collective bargaining units once those staffs are in sight.
Physically and logically integrated	Existing news/advertising departments generate on-line products from within their organizations. Little or no separate on-line staff.	Pluses: Control over all available inputs and outputs of editorial content. If integration reaches to reporting staff, can implement multimedia newsgathering techniques. More storytelling approaches in arsenal. Minuses: Must allocate portion of resources to on-line. Editing attention divided between print and on-line techniques. Extensive retraining required to deal with multiple content inputs and outputs. Publishing systems may require modifications, enhancements for on-line output.	Pluses: Extensive bundling options, partnership models. Repurposing of print ads easier to implement. All sales teams have multimedia product lines in arsenal. Minuses: Difficult to separate profit/loss statements for on-line under a heavy bundling model. Extensive retraining of sales force and clients to close on-line sales, which are historically more difficult.	Pluses: Can draw on full resources of larger print departments. May effect gradual improvements and extensions in the way news is gathered and edited. Minuses: Harder to get mindshare in existing departments for distinct values of on-line services. May be harder to get past the basic step of repurposing newspaper content. Integration with one department -- either news or advertising -- may come at the expense of integration with the other.	The first step -- putting everyone in the same room -- is comparatively easy. It's much harder to achieve true integration of newsgathering inputs and editing/production outputs for multiple media. It may be even tougher in ad sales, where a single rep can still close a single print contract worth the entire year's total on-line revenue.

From THE COLE PAPERS, January 1999, Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.